It tracks the controversy and makes is quite clear to me that there is plenty of room for debate over whether or not waterboarding is torture. The juicy stuff is near the end.

I found it particularly interesting that it has been used on many American soldiers to prepare them for what will likely happen to them if captured in battle....only worse.

Golly, just think, the military has been "torturing" our boys. There's a payday for the lawyers.

Lots of concern over what to do to get the information from high value targets in dangerous situations. Lots of questions, no answers, about what the Geneva Convention really considers torture. Congress in the 2005 and 2006 bills didn't specifically prohibit waterboarding. The military manual of 2006 prohibits it for the military and the Bush admin felt that the CIA could still use it as a technique in dire siturations.

It all sounds to me like there won't be any UN war crimes trial for GWB.

coaledsweat wrote:I wasn't aware that Al Quida had signed the Geneva Convention, if they didn't, why would you afford them it's benefits?

Because we are civilized, honorable men & they are savages. We are the "Good Guys" (at least we used to be & now will be again)

coaledsweat wrote:Isn't it an agreement between participants?

Not at all. It is an international treaty agreed to by all civilized nations to treat prisoners humanely....Not dependent on how they treat us.

coaledsweat wrote:War is something you need to win if you want to talk to your grandchildren. Most of our parents generation knows all about that.

War, like any other endeavor of mankind, has rules which are commonly agreed too. Violate those rules & you are no better than vicious, wild animals. You don't have to become an animal to defeat them.

coaledsweat wrote:We have bailed the rest of the world out twice now, and wrote it off. Today our friends (like the French, who only can tolerate us when they are at war with someone else) around the world are looking down on us

Only because we have recently lowered ourselves o the level of our savage enemies. Thankfully, that has now stopped & we will regain the world's respect.....& our own self-respect!

The "torture" is debatable, and only pertains to a few individuals. Had we all been together on this from the beginning, this war may have been won already. How civilized and honorable do you think you will be when they lop your head off? The world won't have much respect for us when they are all praying to Allah.

Your fairy tale outlook on this is admirable, it's unfortunate that it will cost so many innocent lives.

coaledsweat wrote:Your fairy tale outlook on this is admirable, it's unfortunate that it will cost so many innocent lives.

Sorry but I don/'t think there's ever justification to do things the way things have been done for the last 8 years....even if (big "If") it was expedient & effective.

Analogy: The way things worked b4, if a murder was committed & we knew that someone in a certain neighborhood committed the murder, we simply rounded up EVERYONE in the neighborhood & killed them! (very expedient & quite effective,......but morally wrong!)

The moral way is what President Obama is re instituting in this country.......Punish the guilty party only!(admittedly harder to do, but the only moral, right, & American way to do it)

Devil505 wrote:Analogy: The way things worked b4, if a murder was committed & we knew that someone in a certain neighborhood committed the murder, we simply rounded up EVERYONE in the neighborhood & killed them! (very expedient & quite effective,......but morally wrong!)

That is simply untrue. If you have any evidence of such an occurence being the rules of engagement for US troops, let's see it.

Devil505 wrote:Analogy: The way things worked b4, if a murder was committed & we knew that someone in a certain neighborhood committed the murder, we simply rounded up EVERYONE in the neighborhood & killed them! (very expedient & quite effective,......but morally wrong!)

That is simply untrue. If you have any evidence of such an occurence being the rules of engagement for US troops, let's see it.

"We're fighting the there so we don't have to fight them here"

When the "there" in question (Iraq) was an uninvolved 3rd party. When you turn a third country into an arena for a war between two other parties (which is what we did in Iraq) all the civilians that get killed are on your head.

coalkirk wrote:That is simply untrue. If you have any evidence of such an occurence being the rules of engagement for US troops, let's see it.

I was looking at the broader pic, not GI's ROE.What I meant was this: We were attacked on 9/11/2001 & rather than go after & punish just those who perpetrated that crime, we attacked 2 entire countries, one of which never had any connection to 9/11. Then, we took prisoner 100's of people, some guilty of crimes but others totally innocent, & we have denied them access to any court or way of proving their innocence.

I guess what my basic problem is that you can't use armies & warfare to find & punish criminals. 9/11 was a CRIME & we took the simplistic (an ineffective) remedy of "Calling It" an act of war. It was a criminal act & needed to be dealt with with a scalpel rather than a meat axe.Al Capone was a criminal, who we dealt with individually...as a criminal. (we didn't round up everyone in Chicago & throw them all in prison...without court access)

if we would have fought WORLD WAR TWO like the bleeding hearts say we should fight a war we would be talking another language,thats if we would have even been born.

We are dealing with an enemy who wants to kill all of us children included.When they bring it here to our soil with enough force to really destroy.I am sure there would be some different oppions on how we treat prisoners.

Freddy, Millworker - I am wondering where it is that you get your news from. If it’s from the TV – including FOX – or newspapers buying Associate Press articles you are being woefully misinformed. Being prior military and living next to DC I have many friends and acquaintance living and serving around the world and not one agrees that our reputation has been tarnished by our actions at Gitmo or any other place. Rather America remains the number one destination for immigrants around the world. Yeah, we are not perfect but we are making a difference. Our number one priority should be the protection of our citizens and let’s not forget that.

As for the individuals who referred to our former President as a “buttwad,” I have a hard time accepting your arguments when you’ve shown yourself to be uneducated such that your discussion resorts to name calling. I did not vote for Obama and do not support his policies – I think they will hurt our country more then we know. But I will never call him names, that serves no purpose and he is the President. There are many reasons I would not vote for former President Bush but his stand on Terrorism is not one of them. When he was in office I knew that when my children went to sleep at night they had a better chance of waking up unharmed then they do now. Unfortunately, my 14 year old knows this, too. It's not rocket science. This belief is shattered now that Pres Obama has ordered the closing of Gitmo. News sources other then the Mainstream Media report that anywhere between 18 and 60 of former residents of Gitmo have been recaptured on the battlefield, trying to kill Americans and innocent bystanders. Did you hear that on the news? The most famous former resident is now the head of Al-Qaida in Yemen. That information was buried in the NYTimes. So say what you will about Bush’s economic and domestic policies but he did manage not to allow another attack on the US mainland during his eight years in office. I hope and pray that at the end of the Obama administration we can say the same but in closing Gitmo we have lost one of our most successful tools and now have both arms tied behind our back instead of just one.

Let’s have a discussion and leave out the name calling of our former President. Lisa

Devil505 wrote:I guess what my basic problem is that you can't use armies & warfare to find & punish criminals. 9/11 was a CRIME & we took the simplistic (an ineffective) remedy of "Calling It" an act of war. It was a criminal act & needed to be dealt with with a scalpel rather than a meat axe.Al Capone was a criminal, who we dealt with individually...as a criminal. (we didn't round up everyone in Chicago & throw them all in prison...without court access)

I think your last statements sum up the differences in how we view the world. 9/11 wasn't a crime. A crime is robbery, rape, kidnaping. This was an act of war. Thousands of innocent civilians immulated and crushed. Others deciding to jump to their deaths from hundreds of feet in the air to avoid being burned to death. Who knows how many tens of thousands of others will die from the asbestos they inhaled as the towers fell. No, this far surpasses being a crime. Treating terrorists as simple criminals was the mistake that Clinton made. The only reason we haven't been hit again here is because they have been under constant assault from us, keeping them occupied and off balance, thanks to Bush. But make no mistake, if you've read the history of al quieda, they are nothing but patient and calculating. You can be sure they are planning another attack and if they hold true to their past history, it will be bigger and involve far more casualties than before. They always up the ante. As horrible as they were, the shear genius of the 9/11 attacks was amazing. Using our own planes as weapons into the world trade center, the pentagon and the white house (the PA crash). They don't care if we proscute a couple of their leutenants in a criminal court. Hell most of them don't even plan to survive their own attacks. We've got to take the fight to them.

It will be interesting to see how libs handle the about to be ramped up war in Afghanistan. Here's a region that has a very sucessfull history of repelling invaders for over a 1,000 years. If Obama can pull this off, he will have my undieing repsect.

steveyrock wrote:We are dealing with an enemy who wants to kill all of us children included.When they bring it here to our soil with enough force to really destroy.I am sure there would be some different oppions on how we treat prisoners.

So, your argument is that if we can show how ruthless our enemy is....we are justified in killing & incarcerating INNOCENT people??

Opinion: The election result (last November) proved that the majority of Americans don't believe that & want to return to being the world's "Good Guys"